Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) Shows Off Its Strong Pipeline

With general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd into Eli Lilly. Viking Global assembled the most outsized position in Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE:LLY). Viking Global had $847.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors also initiated a $31 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new LLY investors: Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, Michael Castor’s Sio Capital, and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE:LLY). We will take a look at Ambev SA (ADR) (NYSE:ABEV), Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ:CELG), China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNP), and QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM). This group of stocks’ market values resemble LLY’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 39 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.74 billion. That figure was $3.00 billion in LLY’s case. Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ:CELG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNP) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE:LLY) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average and just a notch below the two most popular stocks in the list. Given that LLY also rose in popularity during Q1, while the other two stocks lost investors, LLY may be worth considering for a long position.

Disclosure: None